Advanced Users May Wonder: What's the Big Difference between Old School and New School?: Here's the deal. If you go with old-school MBR partitions, your /boot partition will be an ext2 filesystem, and you'll use fdisk to create your MBR partitions. If you go with new-school GPT partitions and UEFI booting, your /boot partition will be a vfat filesystem, because this is what UEFI is able to read, and you will use gdisk to create your GPT partitions. And you'll install GRUB a bit differently. That's about all it comes down to, in case you were curious.

Along the way, you can type "p" and hit Enter to view your current partition table. If you make a mistake, you can type "d" to delete an existing partition that you created. When you are satisfied with your partition setup, type "w" to write your configuration to disk:

Write Partition Table To Disk:

Command: w ↵
Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): Y ↵

The partition table will now be written to the disk and gdisk will close.

Now, your GPT/GUID partitions have been created, and will show up as the following block devices under Linux:

/dev/sda1, which will be used to hold the /boot filesystem,

/dev/sda2, which will be used for swap space, and

/dev/sda3, which will hold your root filesystem.

Tip

You can verify that the block devices above were correctly created by running the command lsblk.

Creating filesystems

Note

This section covers both BIOS and UEFI installs. Don't skip it!

Before your newly-created partitions can be used, the block devices that were created in the previous step need to be initialized with filesystem metadata. This process is known as creating a filesystem on the block devices. After filesystems are created on the block devices, they can be mounted and used to store files.

Let's keep this simple. Are you using old-school MBR partitions? If so, let's create an ext2 filesystem on /dev/sda1:

root# mkfs.ext2 /dev/sda1

If you're using new-school GPT partitions for UEFI, you'll want to create a vfat filesystem on /dev/sda1, because this is what UEFI is able to read:

root# mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sda1

Now, let's create a swap partition. This partition will be used as disk-based virtual memory for your Funtoo Linux system.

You will not create a filesystem on your swap partition, since it is not used to store files. But it is necessary to initialize it using the mkswap command. Then we'll run the swapon command to make your newly-initialized swap space immediately active within the live CD environment, in case it is needed during the rest of the install process:

root#mkswap /dev/sda2root#swapon /dev/sda2

Now, we need to create a root filesystem. This is where Funtoo Linux will live. We generally recommend ext4 or XFS root filesystems. If you're not sure, choose ext4. Here's how to create a root ext4 filesystem:

root# mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3

...and here's how to create an XFS root filesystem, if you prefer to use XFS instead of ext4:

root# mkfs.xfs /dev/sda3

Your filesystems (and swap) have all now been initialized, so that that can be mounted (attached to your existing directory heirarchy) and used to store files. We are ready to begin installing Funtoo Linux on these brand-new filesystems.

Warning

When deploying an OpenVZ host, please use ext4 exclusively. The Parallels development team tests extensively with ext4, and modern versions of openvz-rhel6-stable are not compatible with XFS, and you may experience kernel bugs.

Mounting filesystems

Mount the newly-created filesystems as follows, creating /mnt/funtoo as the installation mount point:

Optionally, if you have a separate filesystem for /home or anything else:

root# mkdir /mnt/funtoo/homeroot# mount /dev/sda4 /mnt/funtoo/home

If you have /tmp or /var/tmp on a separate filesystem, be sure to change the permissions of the mount point to be globally-writeable after mounting, as follows:

root# chmod 1777 /mnt/funtoo/tmp

Setting the Date

Important

If your system's date and time are too far off (typically by months or years,) then it may prevent Portage from properly downloading source tarballs. This is because some of our sources are downloaded via HTTPS, which use SSL certificates and are marked with an activation and expiration date. However, if your system time is relatively close to correct, you can probably skip this step for now.

Now is a good time to verify the date and time are correctly set to UTC. Use the date command to verify the date and time:

root# date
Fri Jul 15 19:47:18 UTC 2011

If the date and/or time need to be corrected, do so using date MMDDhhmmYYYY, keeping in mind hhmm are in 24-hour format. The example below changes the date and time to "July 16th, 2011 @ 8:00PM" UTC:

root# date 071620002011
Fri Jul 16 20:00:00 UTC 2011

Once you have set the system clock, it's a very good idea to copy the time to the hardware clock, so it persists across reboots:

root# hwclock --systohc

Installing the Stage 3 tarball

Now that filesystems are created and your hardware and system clock are set, the next step is downloading the initial Stage 3 tarball. The Stage 3 is a pre-compiled system used as a starting point to install Funtoo Linux. Notice: if you're using virtual machines (like Vbox) generic stage3 images are preferred rather than cpu-optimized ones.

To download the correct build of Funtoo Linux for your system, head over to the Subarches page. Subarches are builds of Funtoo Linux that are designed to run on a particular type of CPU, to offer the best possible performance. They also take advantage of the instruction sets available for each CPU.

The Subarches page lists all CPU-optimized versions of Funtoo Linux. Find the one that is appropriate for the type of CPU that your system has, and then click on its name in the first column (such as corei7, for example.) You will then go to a page dedicated to that subarch, and the available stage3's available for download will be listed.

For most subarches, you will have several stage3's available to choose from. This next section will help you understand which one to pick.

Which Build?

If you're not sure, pick funtoo-current.

Funtoo Linux has various different 'builds':

Build

Description

funtoo-current

The most commonly-selected build of Funtoo Linux. Receives rapid updates and preferred by desktop users.

Which Variant?

Our "regular" stage3's are listed with a variant of standard. The following variant builds are available:

Variant

Description

standard

The "standard" version of Funtoo Linux

pure64

A 64-bit build that drops multilib (32-bit compatibility) support. Can be ideal for server systems.

hardened

Includes PIE/SSP toolchain for enhanced security. PIE does require the use of PaX in the kernel, while SSP works with any kernel, and provides enhanced security in user-space to avoid stack-based exploits. For expert users.

Download the Stage3

Once you have found the stage3 that you would like to download, use wget to download the Stage 3 tarball you have chosen to use as the basis for your new Funtoo Linux system. It should be saved to the /mnt/funtoo directory as follows:

Note that 64-bit systems can run 32-bit or 64-bit stages, but 32-bit systems can only run 32-bit stages. Make sure that you select a Stage 3 build that is appropriate for your CPU. If you are not certain, it is a safe bet to choose the generic_64 or generic_32 stage. Consult the Subarches page for more information.

Once the stage is downloaded, extract the contents with the following command, substituting in the actual name of your stage 3 tarball:

root# tar xpf stage3-latest.tar.xz

Important

It is very important to use tar's "p" option when extracting the Stage 3 tarball - it tells tar to preserve any permissions and ownership that exist within the archive. Without this option, your Funtoo Linux filesystem permissions will be incorrect.

Chroot into Funtoo

To install Funtoo Linux, the chroot command is first used. The chroot command will "switch into" the new Funtoo Linux system, so the commands you execute after running "chroot" will run within your newly-extracted Funtoo Linux system.

Before chrooting, there are a few things that need to be done to set up the chroot environment. You will need to mount /proc, /sys and /dev inside your new system. Use the following commands to do so:

You'll also want to copy over resolv.conf in order to have proper resolution of Internet hostnames from inside the chroot:

root#cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/funtoo/etc/

Now you can chroot into your new system. Use env before chroot to ensure that no environment settings from the installation media are pulled in to your new system:

root# env -i HOME=/root TERM=$TERM chroot . bash -l

Note

For users of live CDs with 64-bit kernels installing 32-bit systems: Some software may use uname -r to check whether the system is 32 or 64-bit. You may want append linux32 to the chroot command as a workaround, but it's generally not needed.

Important

If you receive the error "chroot: failed to run command `/bin/bash': Exec format error", it is most likely because you are running a 32-bit kernel and trying to execute 64-bit code. Make sure that you have selected the proper type of kernel when booting SystemRescueCD.

It's also a good idea to change the default command prompt while inside the chroot. This will avoid confusion if you have to change terminals. Use this command:

root#export PS1="(chroot) $PS1"

Test internet name resolution from within the chroot:

root# ping -c 5 google.com

If you can't ping, make sure /etc/resolv.conf doesn't contain things like 127.0.x.x addresses, if it does, change the 127.0.x.x entry to 8.8.8.8 -- Google's public dns address. Make sure to replace this with your dns of choice once the system is installed.

Congratulations! You are now chrooted inside a Funtoo Linux system. Now it's time to get Funtoo Linux properly configured so that Funtoo Linux will start successfully, without any manual assistance, when your system is restarted.

Downloading the Portage tree

Now it's time to install a copy of the Portage repository, which contains package scripts (ebuilds) that tell portage how to build and install thousands of different software packages. To create the Portage repository, simply run emerge --sync from within the chroot. This will automatically clone the portage tree from GitHub:

Configuring your system

As is expected from a Linux distribution, Funtoo Linux has its share of configuration files. The one file you are absolutely required to edit in order to ensure that Funtoo Linux boots successfully is /etc/fstab. The others are optional.

Using Nano

The default editor included in the chroot environment is called nano. To edit one of the files below, run nano as follows:

(chroot) # nano /etc/fstab

When in the editor, you can use arrow keys to move the cursor, and common keys like backspace and delete will work as expected. To save the file, press Control-X, and answer y when prompted to save the modified buffer if you would like to save your changes.

Configuration Files

Here are a full list of files that you may want to edit, depending on your needs:

File

Do I need to change it?

Description

/etc/fstab

YES - required

Mount points for all filesystems to be used at boot time. This file must reflect your disk partition setup. We'll guide you through modifying this file below.

/etc/localtime

Maybe - recommended

Your timezone, which will default to UTC if not set. This should be a symbolic link to something located under /usr/share/zoneinfo (e.g. /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Montreal)

/etc/make.conf (symlink) - also known as:/etc/portage/make.conf

Maybe - recommended

Parameters used by gcc (compiler), portage, and make. It's a good idea to set MAKEOPTS. This is covered later in this document.

/etc/conf.d/hostname

Maybe - recommended

Used to set system hostname. Set the hostname variable to the fully-qualified (with dots, ie. foo.funtoo.org) name if you have one. Otherwise, set to the local system hostname (without dots, ie. foo). Defaults to localhost if not set.

/etc/hosts

No

You no longer need to manually set the hostname in this file. This file is automatically generated by /etc/init.d/hostname.

/etc/conf.d/keymaps

Optional

Keyboard mapping configuration file (for console pseudo-terminals). Set if you have a non-US keyboard. See Funtoo Linux Localization.

/etc/conf.d/hwclock

Optional

How the time of the battery-backed hardware clock of the system is interpreted (UTC or local time). Linux uses the battery-backed hardware clock to initialize the system clock when the system is booted.

Allows you to specify the default console font. To apply this font, enable the consolefont service by running rc-update add consolefont.

profiles

Optional

Some useful portage settings that may help speed up intial configuration.

If you're installing an English version of Funtoo Linux, you're in luck, as most of the configuration files can be used as-is. If you're installing for another locale, don't worry. We will walk you through the necessary configuration steps on the Funtoo Linux Localization page, and if needed, there's always plenty of friendly, helpful support available. (See Community)

Let's go ahead and see what we have to do. Use nano -w <name_of_file> to edit files -- the "-w" argument disables word-wrapping, which is handy when editing configuration files. You can copy and paste from the examples.

Warning

It's important to edit your /etc/fstab file before you reboot! You will need to modify both the "fs" and "type" columns to match the settings for your partitions and filesystems that you created with gdisk or fdisk. Skipping this step may prevent Funtoo Linux from booting successfully.

/etc/fstab

/etc/fstab is used by the mount command which is run when your system boots. Lines in this file inform mount about filesystems to be mounted and how they should be mounted. In order for the system to boot properly, you must edit /etc/fstab and ensure that it reflects the partition configuration you used earlier in the install process. If you can't remember the partition configuration that you used earlier, the lsblk command may be of help to you:

Currently, our default /etc/fstabfile has the root filesystem as /dev/sda4 and the swap partition as /dev/sda3. These will need to be changed to /dev/sda3 and /dev/sda2, respectively.

Note

If you're using UEFI to boot, change the /dev/sda1 line so that it says vfat instead of ext2. Similarly, make sure that the /dev/sda3 line specifies either xfs or ext4, depending on which filesystem you chose earlier on in the installation process when you created filesystems.

/etc/localtime

/etc/localtime is used to specify the timezone that your machine is in, and defaults to UTC. If you would like your Funtoo Linux system to use local time, you should replace /etc/localtime with a symbolic link to the timezone that you wish to use.

(chroot) # ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/MST7MDT /etc/localtime

The above sets the timezone to Mountain Standard Time (with daylight savings). Type ls /usr/share/zoneinfo to list available timezones. There are also sub-directories containing timezones described by location.

/etc/portage/make.conf

MAKEOPTS can be used to define how many parallel compilations should occur when you compile a package, which can speed up compilation significantly. A rule of thumb is the number of CPUs (or CPU threads) in your system plus one. If, for example, you have a dual core processor without hyper-threading, then you would set MAKEOPTS to 3:

MAKEOPTS="-j3"

If you are unsure about how many processors/threads you have, then use nproc to help you.

(chroot) # nproc
16

Set MAKEOPTS to this number plus one:

MAKEOPTS="-j17"

USE flags define what functionality is enabled when packages are built. It is not recommended to add a lot of USE flags during installation; you should wait until you have a working, bootable system before changing your USE flags. A USE flag prefixed with a minus ("-") sign tells Portage not to use the flag when compiling. A Funtoo guide to USE flags will be available in the future. For now, you can find out more information about USE flags in the Gentoo Handbook.

LINGUAS tells Portage which local language to compile the system and applications in (those who use LINGUAS variable like OpenOffice). It is not usually necessary to set this if you use English. If you want another language such as French (fr) or German (de), set LINGUAS appropriately:

LINGUAS="fr"

/etc/conf.d/hwclock

If you dual-boot with Windows, you'll need to edit this file and change the value of clock from UTC to local, because Windows will set your hardware clock to local time every time you boot Windows. Otherwise you normally wouldn't need to edit this file.

(chroot) # nano -w /etc/conf.d/hwclock

Localization

By default, Funtoo Linux is configured with Unicode (UTF-8) enabled, and for the US English locale and keyboard. If you would like to configure your system to use a non-English locale or keyboard, see Funtoo Linux Localization.

Introducing Portage

Portage, the Funtoo Linux package manager has a command called emerge which is used to build and install packages from source. It also takes care of installing all of the package's dependencies. You call emerge like this:

(chroot) # emerge packagename

When you install a package by specifying its name in the command-line, Portage records its name in the /var/lib/portage/world file. It does so because it assumes that, since you have installed it by name, you want to consider it part of your system and want to keep the package updated in the future. This is a handy feature, since when packages are being added to the world set, we can update our entire system by typing:

(chroot) # emerge --sync
(chroot) # emerge -auDN @world

This is the "official" way to update your Funtoo Linux system. Above, we first update our Portage tree using git to grab the latest ebuilds (scripts), and then run an emerge command to update the world set of packages. The options specified tell emerge to:

a - show us what will be emerged, and ask us if we want to proceed

u - update the packages we specify -- don't emerge them again if they are already emerged.

D - Consider the entire dependency tree of packages when looking for updates. In other words, do a deep update.

N - Update any packages that have changed (new) USE settings.

You should also consider passing --with-bdeps=y when emerging @world, at least once in a while. This will update build dependencies as well.

Of course, sometimes we want to install a package but not add it to the world file. This is often done because you only want the package installed temporarily or because you know the package in question is a dependnecy of another package. If this behavior is desired, you call emerge like this:

If a version is listed under Latest version installed, then debian-sources is already pre-built for you and you can skip the rest of the Kernel section, and proceed to the Installing a Bootloader section.

Building the Kernel

If you need to build a kernel for Funtoo Linux, please follow these steps:

Note

See Funtoo Linux Kernels for a full list of kernels supported in Funtoo Linux. We recommend debian-sources for new users.

Important

debian-sources with binary USE flag requires at least 14GB free in /var/tmp and takes around 1 hour to build on a Intel Core i7 Processor.

Let's emerge our kernel:

(chroot) # emerge debian-sources

Once emerge completes, you'll have a brand new kernel and initramfs installed to /boot, plus kernel headers installed in /usr/src/linux, and you'll be ready to configure the boot loader to load these to boot your Funtoo Linux system.

Warning

If you have a RAID in your machine, the kernel installation will pull in the mdadm tool as a dependency. It is important to edit the /etc/mdadm.conf file prior to rebooting the machine so the RAID is properly recognised and set up before the kernel attempts to mount it in the tree. Failing to do so can result in an unusable or even unbootable system! For specific details, consult the mdadm man page man mdadm or the mdadm ebuild page.

Note

NVIDIA card users: the binary USE flag installs the Nouveau drivers which cannot be loaded at the same time as the proprietary drivers, and cannot be unloaded at runtime because of KMS. You need to blacklist it under /etc/modprobe.d/.

First Boot, and in the future...

OK -- you are ready to boot!

You only need to run grub-install when you first install Funtoo Linux, but you need to re-run boot-update every time you modify your /etc/boot.conf file or add new kernels to your system. This will regenerate /boot/grub/grub.cfg so that you will have new kernels available in your GRUB boot menu, the next time you reboot.

Configuring your network

It's important to ensure that you will be able to connect to your local-area network after you reboot into Funtoo Linux. There are three approaches you can use for configuring your network: NetworkManager, dhcpcd, and the Funtoo Linux Networking scripts. Here's how to choose which one to use based on the type of network you want to set up.

Wi-Fi

For laptop/mobile systems where you will be using Wi-Fi, roaming, and connecting to various networks NetworkManager is strongly recommended.
Since Wi-Fi cards require firmware to operate, it is also recommended that you emerge the linux-firmware ebuild:

The above command will ensure that NetworkManager starts after you boot into Funtoo Linux. Once you've completed these installation steps and have booted into Funtoo Linux, you can use the addwifi command to connect to a Wi-Fi access point:

wpa_supplicant is also a good choice for wireless network connections. See the net-wireless/wpa_supplicant package for steps involved in setting up wpa_supplicant.

Desktop (Wired DHCP)

For a home desktop or workstation with wired Ethernet that will use DHCP, the simplest and most effective option to enable network connectivity is to simply add dhcpcd to the default runlevel:

(chroot) # rc-update add dhcpcd default

When you reboot, dhcpcd will run in the background and manage all network interfaces and use DHCP to acquire network addresses from a DHCP server.

If your upstream DHCP server is dnsmasq, it can be configured to assign addresses via mac address to make servers on DHCP feasible.

Server (Static IP)

For servers, the Funtoo Linux Networking scripts are recommended. They are optimized for static configurations and things like virtual ethernet bridging for virtualization setups. See Funtoo Linux Networking for information on how to use Funtoo Linux's template-based network configuration system.

Hostname

By default Funtoo uses "localhost" as hostname. Although the system will work perfectly fine using this name, some ebuilds refuse to install when detecting localhost as hostname. It also may create confusion if several systems use the same hostname. Therefore, it is advised to change it to a more meaningful name. The hostname itself is arbitrary, meaning you can choose almost any combination of characters, as long as it makes sense to the system administrator. To change the hostname, edit

(chroot) # nano /etc/conf.d/hostname

Look for the line starting with hostname and change the entry between the quotes. Save the file, on the next boot Funtoo will use the new hostname.

Warning

Do not use special characters in the hostname, as the shell may interpret these, leading to unpredictable results. Use the Latin alphabet: a-z, A-Z, 0-9

Tip

Use short hostnames (up to 8 or 10 characters) to prevent the terminal screen being filled with the hostname, leaving little space for the command itself. This become particularly poignant when coding long command strings in various programming languages like Bash, Python, SQL and Perl

Finishing Steps

Set your root password

It's imperative that you set your root password before rebooting so that you can log in.

(chroot) # passwd

Restart your system

Now is the time to leave chroot, to unmount Funtoo Linux partitions and files and to restart your computer. When you restart, the GRUB boot loader will start, load the Linux kernel and initramfs, and your system will begin booting.

System Rescue CD will gracefully unmount your new Funtoo filesystems as part of its normal shutdown sequence.

You should now see your system reboot, the GRUB boot loader appear for a few seconds, and then see the Linux kernel and initramfs loading. After this, you should see Funtoo Linux itself start to boot, and you should be greeted with a login: prompt. Funtoo Linux has been successfully installed!

Profiles

Once you have rebooted into Funtoo Linux, you can further customize your system to your needs by using Funtoo Profiles. A quick introduction to profiles is included below -- consult the Funtoo Profiles page for more detailed information. There are five basic profile types: arch, build, subarch, flavors and mix-ins:

Sub-Profile Type

Description

arch

Typically x86-32bit or x86-64bit, this defines the processor type and support of your system. This is defined when your stage was built and should not be changed.

build

Defines whether your system is a current, stable or experimental build. current systems will have newer packages unmasked than stable systems. This is defined when your stage is built and is typically not changed.

subarch

Defines CPU optimizations for your system. The subarch is set at the time the stage3 is built, but can be changed later to better settings if necessary. Be sure to pick a setting that is compatible with your CPU.

flavor

Defines the general type of system, such as server or desktop, and will set default USE flags appropriate for your needs.

mix-ins

Defines various optional settings that you may be interested in enabling.

One arch, build and flavor must be set for each Funtoo Linux system, while mix-ins are optional and you can enable more than one if desired. Often, flavors and mix-ins inherit settings from other sub-profiles. Use epro show to view your current profile settings, in addition to any inheritance information:

View available profiles. Enabled profiles will be highlighted in cyan. Directly enabled profiles will be in bold and have a * appended.

(chroot) # epro list

Change the system flavor.

(chroot) # epro flavor desktop

Add a mix-in.

(chroot) # epro mix-in +gnome

Next Steps

If you are brand new to Funtoo Linux and Gentoo Linux, please check out Funtoo Linux First Steps, which will help get you acquainted with your new system. We also have a category for our official documentation, which includes all docs that we officially maintain for installation and operation of Funtoo Linux.

We also have a number of pages dedicated to setting up your system. See First Steps for a list of these pages.